As promised:

I finally made the trek to Best Buy and snagged a new SD card for my camera. No more blurry drunk-vision camera phone pictures! I also picked up Weird Al's new album. Very good stuff, but a warning to everybody: there's some kind of funky copy protection on the disc that prevents the thing from playing in some CD players. "Some" includes the one in my Buick, unfortunately.

Plus, the copy protection doesn't work very well. Took me fifteen minutes to rip and re-burn it on a disc I CAN play in the car. Sorry Al.

Anyway, here's a nice shot of the engine. Enjoy.

It's in, bitches.

Okay folks, as you can see in this picture, the engine is in the car.

That's the short story. The long story sucks, but I'll tell it anyway.

If you remember, the plan was to use the long Christmas weekend to finish up the engine and put it in the car. Then Saturday morning fate intervened. My grandfather died. He had been fighting lung cancer for about three years, but lung fibrosis was what finally got him. It wasn't unexpected, but it was a sad weekend. I left Saturday afternoon with my sister for Missouri, and was there until after the funeral yesterday.

This morning, I got up bright an early and retrieved my helper from my friend's house. I'm really glad he took Bella at such short notice.

After I got her, I started work on the car. I needed to replace the motor mounts while I had the engine out. It looked easy. Three bolts apiece. Easy?

Not so much. The bolts had nuts behind them. Access to the nuts was through a large hole in the frame that was presently occupied by the lower control arm forward pivot point. The lower control arms had to come out, and before those can come out, you have to pull the spindles and the springs. I hadn't planned on doing the front end quite yet, but I'll be damned if I take all this apart twice.

Sooo, I ripped off the front spindles, got the control arms out, and knocked out all the tie rod ends and the center link. All new parts are ordered, and the lower control arms are at the machine shop getting bead blasted. I'll powdercoat them next week.

After I dropped the arms off at the machine shop, I got the engine on the hoist and started wrestling it in. It took about 35 minutes before it clunked onto the transmission dowels, and another hour of twisting in tight places to get the bellhousing bolts and motor mount through bolts in.

Tomorrow, I have a haircut at 3:30, and I have to pack for my weekend in Maryland. I might be able to get the gas tank reinstalled. If that happens, it may be possible to start it tomorrow, but I'm not holding my breath.

It's done...

...the engine, that is.

Oil pan finally showed up, so I bolted it on. Got new fittings for the heater hoses, and screwed the vacuum port onto the #8 intake runner. It's ready to go in the car. Hi-res pics to come, I'm going to buy a memory card for the digial tomorrow. No more crappy camera phone pictures.

Blang blang

Well, this is the SECOND time I've posted this entry. Blogger beta, you're on my shit list tonight. I hate doing things twice.

Anyway, I went over to Evil Dave's tonight. We sandblasted and powdercoated the pulleys and brackets for the engine. Enjoy.

Summit shipped my oil pan today, too. This thing may actually come together this weekend.

Progress? You tell me...

Well, I skipped out on work early today to take advantage of the great weather (60 degrees... in December?) and try to get some painting and cleanup done. I stopped by O'Reilly Auto Parts and picked up my new harmonic balancer installation kit, and put the balancer on. You can also see the shiney chrome valve covers.

Once the balancer was on, I found TDC and painted a nice stripe on the balancer, then spun it around to 16 degrees before top dead center on the compression stroke. Once it's in the car, I can just shove the distributor in, line the rotor up with #1, and it'll be timed.

The second picture is my spark plugs wires. Plugs in on that side of the engine, little heat protective sock on them, and routed. I need to get some kind of dress up kit for the other side of the engine so it looks as neat.

Not pictured, but the water pump is now on, too.

Here's to hoping the oil pan makes it tomorrow.

More non-progress...

I was all set last weekend. Finish up some detail work, and drop the engine in the car. It was going to be sweet.

And then it wasn't. Pep Boys' lies in their computer system. I was supposed to have gotten a 350 4 bolt main block with the dipstick relief on the driver side. Now, I really don't care which side the dipstick goes on, I just needed to know that so I could order the correct oil pan. Based on what Pep Boys' said I was getting, I ordered a shiny chrome oil pan with a relief for a driver side dipstick.

Well, dipstick on this block is on the passenger side. Pan didn't fit. So, whole weekend was shot. I shipped the pan back to Summit on Monday, they should receive it today and ship me back the correct pan.

In the meantime, I finished painting my living room. YAY! That moves a four year long project into the "done" column.

Bumpstick, ahoy!

What you see here is, obviously, my new long block. What you don't see is the stock camshaft sitting on the floor. According to AllData, the camshaft that came in a 1984 Chevrolet C10 truck with the 4 barrel 350 had .260" lift on the intake side and .270" lift on the exhaust side. AllData didn't tell me about the durations, but I'm sure they're crappy.

The camshaft that is now in this engine is a slightly more aggressive grind. Slightly. It's installed, and I degree'd it to within a degree of the intake centerline on the card, which is as close as I could get with my standard non-adjustable timing set.

The Competition Cams Xtreme Energy XE262H -14 is a mid-range cam grind, advertised powerband is 1500-5500 rpm. It has .464" lift on the intake side, and .470" on the exhaust side. Quite a bit more than stock. Duration at 0.050" lift is a respectable 214 degress intake, 224 degree exhaust. It should be nice and lumpy.

This grind is just a tad larger than the grind GM uses in their 290HP crate engine. My heads and block are the same. So, an informed guess is going to put me somewhere around 300hp at the crank, and 350lb-ft of torque. That could swing around quite a bit. I'll revisit this when the car is running and I get a chance to take it to the dyno.

Tomorrow is Tuesday. In the mail, I'm expecting the rest of the parts from Summit. Tomorrow night's entry should contain a picture of the fully assembled engine. Emphasis on "should."

Core charge is taken care of...

Yay. Hooray. I took care of the evil Pep Boys core charge.

Yes, my new engine, predictably, had a core charge. Unpredictably, the rebuilder Pep Boys uses apparently is really picky about their cores. Must be 4 bolt main, must have dipstick on the correct side, must not already be bored more than .030 over... crazy. Of course, the original engine from my car isn't even the correct displacement, so giving THAT back wasn't going to work.

So, pick up the phone and call KY Core Exchange. Very nice fellows. For the patry sum of $225 I got a junk 4 bolt main block. Lot of money, but less than the $285 I was going to have to pay, so chalk up $60 in savings... but I'm not done.

Nope. Rolled $82.50 in coins. Savings up to $142.50.

Was I done then? Hell no. Loaded up a 3800 Series II and the old 2.4L from my 240Z into the back of the truck and took them to the recycler. An additional $30, plus lots of extra space in my garage!

Actual cash outflow for the day: $52.50. I win. This time.